Spacecraft Carrier Blue Noah...
Here's a video of Blue Noah, set to the UCHUU SENKAN YAMATO OP. [The owner of this video does not allow video embedding, so watch here. Teaches ME not to read the side of the page].
BLUE NOAH was a 1979 attempt by Yoshinobu Nishizaki to duplicate YAMATO's success. He failed. (He tried again with ODIN, with much more painful results). The show was dubbed into English as THUNDER SUB and aired in limited US markets, as well as in other territories (my few TS episodes are descended from Canadian broadcast).
Read Voyager Entertainments "Brothers of Yamato" article here.
I wonder if this opening (sans YAMATO song and lyrics text, obviously) was made and never used for the last 3 episodes of the show, which is when the BN and its brother ships went into space. I don't think the opening ever changed on the actual show when the ships went spaceworthy. This opening would have worked better.
For some reason, BLUE NOAH isn't well regarded among even YAMATO fans. Even Voyager Entertainment doesn't like the show, as you can see from their article. I'm not quite sure why.
The biggest problem with BN is the glut of characters, since both the minisub Sheila and the Blue Noah have separate crews until the kids take over the Blue Noah in #21. The ship designs aren't that great, except for the Blue Noah itself (which is obviouly made by a toy company ..and I WANT THE TOYS!).
Some BN toys are at Toybox DX's Nomura page:
http://www.toyboxdx.com/data/nomura/nomuradiecast.htm
Other than the above...yes, the show is extremely derivative of YAMATO, but YAMATO is the greatest thing since sliced bread, and possibly the greatest thing since whole loaves of bread.
The reputed problem with other YAMATO cash-in ODIN (which I rented, but never got to see...except for the infamous Loudness ending) was that it was deathly overlong and boring. The BN episodes I've seen don't hold a candle to YAMATO 1 or 2, but they're more entertaining
than Y3 was.
Come on, Voyager Entertainment. You've released every SB and YAMATO thing you possibly could. (Unless you'd like to give us DVDs of ISCANDAR and COMET EMPIRE that look halfway decent). Release THUNDER SUB or subtitled BLUE NOAH on DVD!
THUNDER SUB...this time, why not the derivative cash in?
Here's a video of Blue Noah, set to the UCHUU SENKAN YAMATO OP. [The owner of this video does not allow video embedding, so watch here. Teaches ME not to read the side of the page].
BLUE NOAH was a 1979 attempt by Yoshinobu Nishizaki to duplicate YAMATO's success. He failed. (He tried again with ODIN, with much more painful results). The show was dubbed into English as THUNDER SUB and aired in limited US markets, as well as in other territories (my few TS episodes are descended from Canadian broadcast).
Read Voyager Entertainments "Brothers of Yamato" article here.
I wonder if this opening (sans YAMATO song and lyrics text, obviously) was made and never used for the last 3 episodes of the show, which is when the BN and its brother ships went into space. I don't think the opening ever changed on the actual show when the ships went spaceworthy. This opening would have worked better.
For some reason, BLUE NOAH isn't well regarded among even YAMATO fans. Even Voyager Entertainment doesn't like the show, as you can see from their article. I'm not quite sure why.
The biggest problem with BN is the glut of characters, since both the minisub Sheila and the Blue Noah have separate crews until the kids take over the Blue Noah in #21. The ship designs aren't that great, except for the Blue Noah itself (which is obviouly made by a toy company ..and I WANT THE TOYS!).
Some BN toys are at Toybox DX's Nomura page:
http://www.toyboxdx.com/data/nomura/nomuradiecast.htm
Other than the above...yes, the show is extremely derivative of YAMATO, but YAMATO is the greatest thing since sliced bread, and possibly the greatest thing since whole loaves of bread.
The reputed problem with other YAMATO cash-in ODIN (which I rented, but never got to see...except for the infamous Loudness ending) was that it was deathly overlong and boring. The BN episodes I've seen don't hold a candle to YAMATO 1 or 2, but they're more entertaining
than Y3 was.
Come on, Voyager Entertainment. You've released every SB and YAMATO thing you possibly could. (Unless you'd like to give us DVDs of ISCANDAR and COMET EMPIRE that look halfway decent). Release THUNDER SUB or subtitled BLUE NOAH on DVD!
THUNDER SUB...this time, why not the derivative cash in?
2 Comments:
"I wonder if this opening (sans YAMATO song and lyrics text, obviously) was made and never used for the last 3 episodes of the show, which is when the BN and its brother ships went into space."
Unfortunately, this appears to be a fan-created OP. It is, however, so well done that it appears to be real. I actually entertained that thought for a moment until I noticed deliberate typos in the credits. The names are taken from the YAMATO staff, but the kanji have been changed slightly.
"Unless you'd like to give us DVDs of ISCANDAR and COMET EMPIRE that look halfway decent"
They could try to do what they seem to have done with YAMATO III: take the high-quality Japanese footage and edit it to fit the American soundtrack. That would, however, be very time-consuming, and moreover the STAR BLAZERS I grew up with looked terrible on TV, so the ragged look may have sentimental value for some. The DVD release of the first two series is at least better than what I remember of one VHS release which was really faded.
My gripe about the first two series on DVD is that the sound effects have been removed from the OPs - and new onscreen text has been added. Oh, and the next episode previews are missing in most cases. Maybe most of them literally are missing. Including the old eyecatches would be nice too: "STAR BLAZERS will be back after these messages ... Back to STAR BLAZERS ... Stay tuned for scenes from the next STAR BLAZERS."
It took me over twenty years to figure out just recently that
- the phrase "star blazers" is actually never used in the show itself (and I wonder why the show wasn't simply called STAR FORCE)
- the phrase "star blazers" is presumably inspired by the word "trailblazers"
THUNDER SUB...this time, why not the derivative cash in?
You and I could write to Voyager. The overwhelming force of ... two people will surely move them!
I don't know who owns the rights to TS, and I don't even know who dubbed it. There could be some legal tangle we don't know about.
-?
I would be much nicer about the subpar SB 1 and 2 releases if they were cheaper. ROBOTECH's original release didn't look fantastic, but it was tolerable and at a great price. I can understand if they couldn't afford to do much remastering - but they price these things at the level of modern anime releases which come with both sub and dub versions (mostly the same video, aside from the 2-sided RONIN WARRIORS release).
I never thought to compare my few tape copies of SB with the DVD sets. It's too bad that the original OPs couldn't be used as an extra, even at bad quality.
I'm not sure who owns TS either. I gather the SB rights reverted back to Yoshinobu Nishizaki, who gave them to Barry Winston (Voyager's head). I'd think TS would still be in his hands, since I doubt anyone wants it (aside from us).
I think I recognized some of the voices from TS on another show - Mysterious Cities of Gold.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mysterious_Cities_of_Gold
There's a video of part of episode 1 here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xn4MzEOF2Y
---Leopardon
Post a Comment
<< Home